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Constant Maturity Data

I’ve been asked multiple times why/when I use constantly maturity data for research and modelling. I thought I’d cover it here on my blog since its been a while. I hope to post more in the coming months/future as it has been a good way for me to organize my thoughts and share what I’ve been working on.

Constant maturity (CM) data is a way of stitching together non-continuous time series just like the back adjusted method. It is used heavily in derivative modelling due to the short-term time span a derivative (options, futures, etc) is listed/traded.

What is it and how is it used?

The CM methodology is essentially holding time constant. Various derivative contracts behave differently as time approach expiration so researchers developed this method to account for that and study the statistical properties through time.

I’ll provide a couple of usages.

In options trading, we know that time is one of the major factors that affect the price of an option as it approaches expiry. Options that expire further out in time are more expensive than options that expire closer to today. The reason for this is due to the implied volatility (IV). Researchers who want to study IV across time but not take the expiration affect in to account needs to hold time constant. For example, the study of how IV changes as a stock option approach earning announcements.

In futures, the CM methodology can be used to model the covariance matrices for risk analysis. For example, if you are trading futures under the same root (Crude) across various expirations, this method has shown to be rather useful is managing portfolio level risk.

For cash, the standout examples are the recent proliferation of the volatility ETPs. Most of these products are structured in a way to maintain a constant exposure to a given DTE. They will buy/sell calendar spread futures daily to rebalance their existing position.

How do you calculate it?

I’ve come across multiple ways of doing this. I will show you the most basic way and readers can test out which suit them best. The method I’ve used in the past is a simple linear interpolation given points. So assuming you are calculating IV for 30 days but you only have IV for a 20 and 40 DTE ATM option the equation is:

Here target DTE is the expiration you want to calculate. DTE.front should be < DTE.back as the front signifies it expires before the back. This is not the only way; there are other ways just like non-linear interpolation, etc. Carol Alexanders books provide more examples and much better explanations than I ever can!